Optimizing Your Existing Wordpress Content

The world of SEO is always changing, and to survive and continue to rank high, you also need to change with the times. Whether or not your posts are getting traffic from search engines, or Google’s latest algorithm changes hit you, the fundamental question remains “how do I optimize existing content on my blog?”

The immediate answer to this puzzle is to get your content updated. There’s no need hoping to keep generating traffic with outdated content. Ensure your content and blog posts are both current and up-to-date. Things change quite fast, and you need to keep up to keep ranking high.

This can be a daunting task no doubt and immediately raises the question – are there any tools that make editing and optimizing my posts any faster and easier?
We’ll point out a few of the most common problems associated with old posts and how to eventually go about fixing them.

First off, let’s see how to search for/know which of your content requires updating.
Having a few posts makes it all the easier. In such an instance, all you have to do is go right ahead and update all of them. For those with dozens or hundreds of posts, it can get a little tricky updating every one of them.

To save time, look up Google Analytics to see which of your post gets the most traffic. Google Analytics allows you to export the result to a PDF or XLS document. The pages which have the most traffic are supposed to be those that should be updated ASAP to increase visitor satisfaction and indeed drive more traffic.

Now to some problems/issues associated with old posts and how to go about fixing them.

Problem 1: A lot of your techniques and tips are out of date and obsolete

Let’s face it; information keeps changing as discoveries are made, rendering what was previously known either old or altogether outdated. There are 1 of 2 ways to approach the issue of old content.
a) With minor changes required, they can be effected and viola, you’re good to go.
b) with more massive changes, a follow-up post would seem preferable. A tip is to ensure the new post is linked to the old one.

Problem 2: Your links are broken

Old posts are usually ridden with some broken links that are dead ends. Not only do they lead nowhere, but they also worsen the user experience. For WordPress users, here are some plugins that come in handy when dealing with broken links.

Screaming Frog

This is especially excellent for Mac users. It is noted for its speed and cool interface. It comes as a desktop program which can be installed on Mac or PC. The Spider scours through links, scripts, CSS, images with an SEO consciousness. It does the job of fetching key page elements for SEO, then presents the data for analysis. To find links that are broken,
-have the program downloaded and installed.
– Input the URL into the spider, click on stat.
– look out for external links and filter.
– Order the list according to status, look out for statuses that turn up with errors such as ‘DNS lookup failed,’ ‘Connection refused’ etc.

Xenu’s link sleuth

This checks for broken links on websites. It verifies links on common links, plugins, images, scripts, etc. It comes up with an updated list of URLs which can be sorted by different criteria. It’s currently the most popular line checker; the only downside is that it’s only on Windows.

WordPress Plugin: Broken Link Checker

This is a popular WordPress Plugin that comes in handy. It monitors your blog, keeping an eye out for broken links and notifies you once they’re found.
It comes in handy for checking your entire website.
After finding the broken links, the next step is to update them.
– open the post in your WordPress dashboard
– search for the broken links using your preferred tool.
– open the links in the browser
– have the broken link copied, then search for it using WordPress.
– search for keywords using Google to check if the link destination has changed
– replace the links in WordPress, and you’re good to go.
– if you fail to find the previous post, either pick a new one or have the link permanently removed.

Problem 3: Poor SEO on previous posts

If you’re ranking low on search engines, it means your posts have poor SEO. However, for those of your posts that rank well, your SEO must have been spot on. Just to be sure, it may turn out that your posts are ranking well for the wrong keyword, which means you’ve been targeting the wrong market all along.

To check which keywords are earning you traffic, follow the steps below (using Google Analytics)
-click on content/landing page and click on the post you wish to check
-select keyword to see which keywords people use to locate your posts
-with this info, you can either change or improve on your search keywords

WordPress SEO by Yoast

This plugin helps you optimize new and existing content using SEO headlines, meta descriptions, etc. It is the ideal plugin to solve your SEO worries.

Problem 4: When your comment section is bogged with Spam

SPAM is a big problem. Regardless of plugins you use, some spam comments still manage to get through. The only way around it has to clean it all up. Closing the comments section of old posts would an excellent place to start as many as visitors come around with the intent of spamming.
While there isn’t any current plugin out there that can filter out old spam messages, you can prevent spam messages from sneaking into your new posts.
Use Anti-spam plugins

AntiSpam Bee

With this antispam plugin, your spam is taken care of. Comments are first sent to Project Honey Pot which reports on whether a comment is a spam or not before it gets featured on your comments section.

Askimet

This is an antispam plugin similar to AntiSpam Bee. It comes with numerous handy features such as the check for spam button on the comments panel.

These are some ways of optimizing your content making sure your keywords are right, your posts are current and relevant, and there’s little or no spam getting through to your comments.